Trails from the East

This week I finished watching an incredible 13-part documentary on LinkTV called Trails from the East. Produced by Dutch documentarian Rob Hof, it is conversations with people, just regular people, riding trains. The film travels from Vietnam, across Asia, the Middle East and Europe and ends in the EU in the Balkans.

It was riveting. The conversations mostly focused on the speakers' opinions about globalization, economic opportunity, politics and religion. The editing was done in such a way that it's rarely an interview and is more often a monologue.

The way it's shot you feel like you are in the train, sitting across from the person just listening. The viewpoints are varied and present a balance between people who see a global way forward of peace and those that want to build barriers and retreat into their own spaces. Perhaps most amazingly, given the subject matter, the film makes no judgments of the people, though the oppression of human rights is noted from time to time.

Hof, a social anthropologist, speaks eight languages and had traveled much of the same path before. I attributed much of this to his ability to get people to open up and speak so freely. He does a great job of explaining his motivations for the film and the approach he used in this short video.

It filled me with hope for a future long beyond me. Don't miss it!